Everything that’s fantastic has a method behind it, from building a home to baking a cake. To achieve built better marketing there is a method which guides you through.
Understanding | Goal Setting | Strategy | Execution & Analysis | Go Back to 1
It’s not enough to know your business goals or budgets, which is usually where the conversation starts when it comes to building a marketing plan. Building a remarkable marketing system requires understanding the business as a whole.
Understanding your business is not about trade secrets or vendors, but the personality of your business. Answering questions like:
- What type of customers generally gravitate towards your product?
- Why do you think it’s this specific type of customer?
- If you cannot identify a type, why not?
- What do you offer that’s unique?
- Are there things you won’t do for your customers?
- What is buying from you like? What is the customer journey?
- What do your happiest customers have to say about you?
- What would make a customer not want to return?
This is just a sample list of what’s to be discussed, and it’s different with every conversation. The point is understanding what your marketing should look like, and what will make it work.
Note: Mismatched marketing is bad for business, it’s like that meal that tastes delicious, but you know you will regret later. It’s leaving a door open and now you have ants in your kitchen. You’ve got to make your marketing match your business, and your customers. It’s attracting the right people, rather than something you (and your customer) will regret later.
Once there is a clear understanding of your business, then it's time to decide where you want that business to go.
Goal Setting
Setting goals actually means creating a series of goals that all align. This means no matter which part of the goal you look at, it can be expanded or contracted to the lower goals. This can be shown with the below example questions.
- What is your revenue now and what is your goal revenue?
- How many products do you have to sell to achieve your current revenue?
- How much business do you earn from website visits or phone calls?
- How much business do you earn from referrals?
- Do you run any paid ads now? What are those statistics like?
- What is your average order value?
- Do your customers often return and buy again? Do you have any statistics on this?
- What area looks the easiest to improve?
The tough part about goal setting like this is that most businesses cannot answer many of these questions. That is actually normal, and it’s ok. You often don’t get to a place where you ask these questions until you’ve gotten there.
Marketing and revenue generation has taken on a life of its own, or said differently, the business earns income, but the challenge is you don’t know how to scale it. If you left this as it is, there are 2 dangers.
- You won’t be able to scale the business because you don’t know what is really working
- You will start seeing a drop in business and won’t know what to fix.
The great news is that these answers are in the data. This and the other 20 questions we haven’t thought of are all there waiting to be pulled out.
- Now you can create goals like:
- Increase revenue by X%
- Increase website traffic
- Reduce acquisition cost in ads
- Increase the number of phone calls
- Get more customer referrals
Setting goals like this creates a system that can be altered so you still hit your top tier goal of revenue increase.
You may find that getting the phone to ring was a lot easier than expected and it’s still generating great revenue. Your series of goals lets you create a marketing balance, where you can pull efforts from one area and divert them to another. You also might see that your revenue goal was too low, and make the change up top.
Your goals are important and there isn’t a true formula. Your business is unique and so are the goals you are going to set. If you want to chat about goal setting you can contact us here.
Now that you’ve set your goals, it’s time to implement the strategy.
Struggling to set your goals? Let’s discuss goal setting today.
Strategy
You have to understand that your strategy is your strategy. People who often claim to have a magic strategy…. are trying to sell you the strategy. If that is the case, why aren’t they just selling your product? They claim to have the formula right?
Your business and how you go from prospect to sale is unique. There is a reason it works and there is a very good reason customers choose to buy from you (or your sales staff). Maybe you have a unique product or a great sales staff or you’ve been grinding out the hours to make it happen. No matter what, you have built a business that works, now it’s time to implement a strategy that helps you hit your new goals.
As you may have noticed, a good amount of The Method is about asking questions. Knowledge is power when it comes to the entire method, including strategy.
- What are you doing now to generate business?
- What has worked in the past?
- What hasn’t worked? Why?
- What is stopping you from scaling what you do now?
- Is there something new you want to try? Why do you want to try that?
Having a basic idea of how you want to get there is important, after all it’s your business. The direction you want to go is your choice.
The final strategy can be simply described with the answers to the below questions.
- What are the ways to reach your audience of potential customers?
- Which ways are easy to implement?
- Which can generate revenue the fastest?
- Which will have the best long term value?
- How will you re-engage prospects?
- How will you nurture customers during the buying process?
- What will you do after the sale to gain repeat business?
- How will your existing customers help you get new ones?
- How many of these things can be driven through AI, Machine Learning and automations?
Your strategy can be as simple or complex as it needs to be. It just matters that you can quantify each piece with a specific goal. You have to be able to analyze it, so you know it’s working.
Not sure if your strategy is where you want it to be, contact us to chat about it.
Execution & Analysis
As a business owner, this is something you know: If you don’t take action on your goals and plans, then they won’t come to fruition. So the obvious next step is executing your strategy. The execution should check the following boxes before you consider it to be proper.
- You are following best practices
- Testing is included for each channel you plan to work
- Every decision is made for a definable reason, and not a feeling
- Results will come in that can be analyzed
If you can’t confidently look at the above list, your execution will be missing something. Your goals, strategy and execution all play equal parts in the perfect marketing execution.
Here is a list of items that might be included in your marketing strategy and execution:
- Website Revamp (Build your site to fit your goals)
- Paid Search Ads (Google ads, Bing ads, PPC)
- Social Media Ads (Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, Linked In)
- SEM/SEO (Search engine optimization and articles)
- Local listings / ads
- CRM Integration
- Email marketing
- Social Media growth and management
- Google Shopping ads
- CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization)
One of the best things about executing your strategy is waiting for results. All results are good results, you learn from everything you execute. Taking results and analyzing them is how everything gets better. It doesn’t matter if you are running a business or coaching a sport. You do something to improve, you see how it worked, you make changes and try again.
If you are doing a great job at execution and analysis, you will always get better.
Go back to 1
You’ve got results and it’s time to jump back into step 1, Understanding. Look into your results and see if they are matching what the business needs to thrive. The questions you ask when you Go Back to 1 are:
- Is this strategy and execution performing as expected?
- Is there something that can be changed in the business to make this strategy work better?
- Are your goals worth altering?
- Does the strategy and execution itself need to be altered?
- How can we make this better?
- How can the business handle this success?
- What lesson did we learn?
You Go back to 1 if your results were far beyond expectations or not good enough to hit your goals. Either way you have to go back and look to keep on track. If your results are way beyond expectations, what will you do to make sure the business keeps up its level of service and quality? If results aren’t what you expected, what can you change? These are all a part of a holistic marketing approach.
Your business can be anything you want it to be, taking a specific and strategic method like the above is how you will have Built Better Marketing.
Want to discuss how The Method can work for you? Schedule free 30 minute call.